Why Conor Murray didn’t come off earlier against Wales on Friday night

The 'stinger' injury explained by a former Irish international.

Everyone is still hurting after Ireland's 22-9 defeat to Wales in Cardiff on Friday night. A key turning point in the game was the injury to Conor Murray who has been one of our most important players over the last 18 months. The scrum half picked up a 'stinger' injury on his arm in the first half but continued playing until half-time and came out for the second half before being eventually withdrawn for Kieran Marmion. Speaking on The Hard Yards, former Ireland and Leinster back row Kevin McLoughlin explained a 'stinger' injury and why Murray stayed on for so long. The chat about it starts at the 18:10 mark. If you can't listen right now, here's what Kevin had to say about the situation.

"I've unfortunately had plenty of stinger injuries in my career, I'm sure Dunners has as well. Generally you can shake them off and it can take three minutes or twenty minutes. But as a player, you know the power is going to come back to your arm and that's what you're telling the medics. "It's very hard for the medics to assess you so you're kind of relying on what the player is telling you to a certain extent. I think giving him [Murray] until half-time made sense. If he's saying at half-time that the power is coming back, then it's hard for them to prove otherwise. "Hindsight's great, we can all say that Joe [Schmidt] should have taken him straight off, but he's been Ireland's most important player so they were going to give him until half-time which was fair. He shouldn't have come out for the second half though."

The next episode of The Hard Yards with our new pundit Ronan O'Gara goes live this Thursday morning. Make sure to subscribe on iTunes and SoundCloud.